Another, deeper fantasy idea

First of all, I hope the admins will show some leniency towards this slightly off-topic thread. (I wasn't sure where to place it, I figured this subforum is read by the most fantasy freaks like myself.) I love the idea of "Fantasy Cycling", but I'm here to tell you some more about my own little project and hear what you guys think.

Short version

I am organizing an independent fantasy competition (starting from Paris-Nice) which, unlike "Fantasy Cycling", focuses more on the long-term future of your fantasy team that competes with the other 17 WorldTour teams. It is a so-called contracts (aka dynasty) league, in which you initially keep 3-5 riders from a chosen WorldTour team, and then complete your team by bidding for the rest of the peloton offering them contracts up to 3 years long, while being limited by a salary cap. Then you select 8/9 riders to compete in each WorldTour event. Pretty much makes you feel like a real team owner. I don't think it has been tried before. I'm looking forward to your comments, advice, or maybe even interest in joining. More details: http://www.profsl.com/smf/index.php?board=1107.0

Long version - the rules

Summary
This is a fantasy league in which you take over one of the 18 World Tour teams, sign up to 30 riders in a series of auctions, and give them multi-year contracts within your total salary cap. Then you choose 8/9 guys to score for you in each race based on the real-life results, and redo the bidding for riders out of contract and neo-pros each January.

Salary Cap
Each team starts with 3-5 keepers and is equally rich. It can spend €5M per year on salaries, including the keepers. Each team can have between 20 and 30 riders.

Keepers' Salaries
All keepers are on a 1 year deal. The salary is derived from his CQ ranking in 2011, 2010, and 2009. The highest of the three is multiplied by 500 and rounded up to the next €10k. Minimum keeper salary is €100k. Examples:
Vanendert - 435*500=217500 => €220k
Gilbert - 3168*500=1584000 => €1.58M
Voeckler - 1744*500=872000 => €880k
Boonen - 1377*500=688500 => €690k
Your grandma - 0*500 => €100k

FA Bidding
Bids are in format of total contract value. The minimum bid is €30k and the minimum increment is 10% of the last bid, rounded up to the nearest €10k. Note that the number of years does not need to be listed until the bid is won. The resulting salary will be the final bid divided by number of years, rounded up to the next €10k. The winning bid will be the highest total contract amount.

Each player is auctioned in a separate thread at the ProFSL website that may be started by anyone, but please follow the template. There is no limit to the number of players that can be auctioned at one time or the number of bids for a player. You cannot at any point make bids that (if all successful) would take you over 30 riders or the salary cap. A bid on a player is considered final when it has been open for 48 hours. This means that no other GM has bid higher on the player of interest.

Contracts
Bidding will be done for players before the league starts and as well as during free agency each following winter. You will be bidding on the whole amount of the contract. Example: If a team bids €3M for Cadel Evans, then that declares that the entire value of his contract is €3M, and they can still choose between 1 year €3M, 2 years €1.5M per, or 3 years €1M per. If he retires earlier, tough luck. Contract guidelines are:

Example: Astana sign Andy Schleck for €2.4M. Based on this amount, they are only able to sign him to a contract up to 2 years, because if Andy's total salary was broken down over 3 years, it would only be €800k per year, not the €1M that is required for a 3 year contract. Nevertheless, if the bid was won at €2.4M then a higher total contract amount can be awarded.

Trades
Two teams can at any point exchange riders and their contracts, as long as it keeps them within the salary cap.

Free agents
A team can at any point during the season start an auction for any rider on the free market. From February 1st, please send a PM to everybody in such a case, the clock increases to 96 hours.

Scoring
Until the evening before the race (until 23h59 local time), every team nominates 8 riders (9 for the Grand Tours) that represent them in this race. Only these riders will score points if they do well IRL. If a team doesn't announce its squad, their 8/9 highest paid riders not participating in any other race at this moment will be selected automatically.

Points are scored in UCI WorldTour events only, but according to the CQ ranking scoring, and not to the UCI WorldTour scoring. CQ ranking rewards riders for finishing well in classics, stages, stage races, but also for keeping and winning jerseys.

All these points are added up in the individual ranking. The final score of each team will be equal to the sum of the points scored by their riders in the calendar year (when nominated for races). The ranking of teams in the unlikely event of a tie will be determined by the place of their best rider in the individual ranking.

If this was last season, i'd be on it like a shot, i had lots of spare time as most forum members will tell you

But having limited time to look at riders..etc this year and maybe even being away from any internet, the road.cc game works just as well on my phone and tablet

I hope you get a few members who play both, as its an interesting take on it, more like running a whole team for a season rather than picking a bunch of riders every race, Its more like playing the fantasy games for football that some of us as used to

So you would have a closing date for "managers" and once the game was started nobody else could join.

18 teams. So only 54-90 participants. How would you work out who would get to take over each virtual team. What if you had 300 people wanting to be SKY, 250 wanting to be Rabobank, etc etc. Then If I put in EBH, does that mean nobody else can have him. There seems to be big holes in a really good germ of an idea.If based on real results, it looks only too easy to not be able to pick a full team especially around the TDF, when teams tactically split their teams between the two, or only participate in one i.e
TDS or DL or Tour of Luxemburg. there would be problems with team time trials, because the virtual "SKY" would actually bear no resemblence to the real "SKY" except for the 3-5 riders. Or to put it another way, you might put the TDS in the programne for the season, and not the DL, therefore there is a huge chance that these 3-5 riders are racing the DL, so you will have no real stars or results to use to score the game.This would mean knowing the precise team rosters, and falling back on the other 25 or so people in the roster, Then there is the problem of real riders riding for other riders in there real teams like a leadout train. Then managers can spend ages creating and picking teams for a race, only to have the programne select the team for them if rosters are late.

What pool of riders are you going to use, the real rosters for each real team???, all registered UCI cyclists, top 150 in UCI listings. In any roster there will be those destined to never ride for the team, because they are in for developement reasons, so the upper echelon is relatively small in some teams, but some teams are hugely rich in riders as in Skys 30 man squad, Radioshack trek's 28 mean roster, but not so strong in Rabobanks 27 man roster.
Then what about the wild card teams for the TDF?

Simplify it and I might give it a go, but not in the present form.
I am sure there will be loopholes in my logic, but there may also be constructive points.
With regard to pricing and bidding and contracts. I am arithmetically really strong, but can make neither hide nor hair of it.

Thanks for the extensive comments! In a nutshell, bad news is you didn't convince me to change much, good news is I have all the problems you listed covered.

I suspect some of your doubts originate from the fact that you haven't actually visited the game page at ProFSL. (Or read the rules for that matter?) But let's tackle them quickly:

1. There are maximum 18 participants. So far we're 12. 1 or 2 more people might still join, but it's fairly irrelevant to the league's existence. I'm also silently happy ro report that nobody took BMC, Sky, or Garmin. Seems like we're a romantic bunch and care more about the success of the Vacansoleils and the AG2Rs of this world.

2. The cyclist universe in not limited. But when offering a contract to, say, Voeckler, you have to take into account that he probably won't win you any points in the Giro. Still, with max 30 riders per team, all signed in January or early February, I have no idea what is your problem with picking the team for TdF or the coexistence of TdS and DL.

Well it IS up and running, just follow the link to join. We're starting the free agency later this week, so make up your mind ASAP. You'd have to choose one of the available teams and give me your 5 keepers http://www.profsl.com/smf/index.php?board=1107.0

That makes no sense, because if i were to pick Gilbert as a keeper, how can you put a 1.5 contract on his head when you state this €1M or higher = 3 years and if you pick him as a keeper you only get a years contract

I'm afraid you misunderstood that part. All keepers get a 1-year contract. In an auction, €1M per year or higher lets you sign a rider for up to 3 years. For example: if you won an auction at total €2.4M, you cannot offer 3 years, thus 2 years at €1.2M per year is your best choice. If you won an auction at €3.3M, you're allowed to sign for 3 years and €1.1M per year. It's very easy once you get used to it. Clear now?

Season 1 is finishing in roughly two weeks. It's safe to say the game has been a huge success so far. We're all looking forward to 2013 already, with some new features: more races, possibly more GM's (we were 18 this year, but it's not really fixed), possibly a neo-pro draft, and brand new wave of exciting auctions starting from November 1. If you'd like to join, send me a PM on ProFSL and/or check out the league for yourself: http://www.profsl.com/smf/index.php?board=1107.0